


The Pictures Frame Themselves

by Bottomfeeder



Category: The Faculty (1998)
Genre: M/M, Photography, The 90s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 02:23:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17051261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bottomfeeder/pseuds/Bottomfeeder
Summary: A day in the life of one Casey Connor.





	The Pictures Frame Themselves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Naemi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naemi/gifts).



> Title from Jimmy Eat World's "Pass the Baby".

Casey loves everything about the photography lab. It's the only place in school that doesn't make him flinch. It's the only place _anywhere_ where he feels comfortable in his own skin. He doesn't even feel that way in his own _room_ at home; his parents act like it's their right to invade it whenever they feel like it.

 

He even loves the lonely, creepy walk through the deserted halls of Herrington at night. He didn't, at first. Even after years of familiarity (there's only so much predictability you can get at this hour; after midnight is when all the freaks come out to play. Casey should know: he is one) doing the same nutjob thing since Freshman year, it's still pretty fucking creepy spending an entire night alone in the dark in an empty school -- _any_ school, let alone _this_ school. Especially when you're spending most of it in a room where most light is forbidden from entering. Casey imagines he's turning into one of those pale, cave-dwelling animals. Any day now he'll start to glow with bioluminescence.

 

But Casey's gotten used to the way the walk down the noise-less halls turns eerie. There's a silent anticipation vibrating in the air for something he can't name. He's gotten used to the way the unnatural absence of sound makes his ears hurt. The way his soft sneaker-clad footsteps, no longer lost in the noise of theday crowd, seem to echo more than is possible for rubber. Now he welcomes the way the metal of the lockers almost hums just beyond the edge of hearing as he passes them. A few have seemingly random scratches in their paint that remind Casey of runes, but are not. These lockers are the most deafening in their constant silent increase in the air pressure they seem to exert. Casey used to come away with headache sparking muzzle flashes behind his eyes. The trickle of blood that used to drip from one nostril a lot more often. It's never been a deterrent. If Casey was so afraid of a bloody nose, he'd never make it to school.

 

But most terrifying of all, is when he gets to Zeke's locker all the way at the end. There are no bits of graffiti carved into its perfectly smooth surface, but the air pressure takes a swan dive, always leaving Casey reeling and tripping over his feet with the sudden release of his senses.

 

The physical relief lasts until he passes another row of lockers. He's used to the way his shoulders instinctively hunch near his ears in a way that's different from when he does it between periods when the bell's rung. During school hours, he's a small, twitchy prey animal. But when he wanders these same halls at night, he doesn't even flinch at his own shadow snared in his Mag light, anymore. Instead, he stares in challenge at the lockers, though nothing's pried its way out yet. The energy isn't exactly calming, but every night Casey feels more and more like one of Herrington's unnatural shadows. Or maybe even one of the things hiding behind a wall of textbooks and backpacks.

 

Casey's stopped whipping his head around, paranoid that the janitor will catch him. He's long since realized the janitors are always gone way before the sun goes down. Herrington -- a warzone for Casey during the day -- accepts his presence after dark. He's become just another part of the environments' after-hours ecosystem.

 

Whenever Casey finds himself standing in front of the door to the photography lab, he always pauses a moment to take a deep breath before opening it. The room almost seems to suck him in when he does. He never remembers shutting the door, but it's always closed when he looks back. Then he'll feel for the lightswitch to the main room that holds the work desks and spools of freshly developed negatives waiting to be placed in the enlargers in the dark room.

 

At this point, Casey can't help flicking his gaze to the red bulb above the lightless film closet. The light's never on when he's not using it himself. No one's ever removing their film from its canister to wind onto the spool. Not this late. 

 

He's learned to accept that there's always a chance some evil bastard (or something worse) could be waiting for him in there. But he's also learned to trust the twisting of his guts anytime someone throws a certain sharp look his way, or says his name with a particular tone. His guts are fine right now.

 

It's just a precaution, anyway. Good lab etiquette. No one's going to waste perfectly good Friday night party hours on torturing freaky little Casey Connor. That's what school hours are for.

 

And no one other than Casey cares this much about photography on a Friday night if it doesn't involve how they look in the school newspaper or how many times they appear in the yearbook.

 

Not even Hextall, the burnt out journalist journalism teacher -- whose job seems to amount to making sure no porn references or cannabis ads sneak their way into the newspaper (they do) -- cares. He just trusted in Casey's terminal geekiness -- in a rare perk -- and handed him the extra keys to the photography lab and supply closet after lending them to Casey each time he wanted touse the lab after hours. Either Hextall forgot to ask for them back, or "forgot" because he was sick of Casey's face. Which was fine with Casey. 

 

Casey doesn't need a key to the school's entrance because there's a first floor bathroom window that Casey is just small enough to squeeze through and athletic enough to jump to. That takes care of the problem of getting into the school itself. He's used it as an emergency exit since the first day of Freshman year when he heard Gabe screaming that he was dead when he finds him for accidentally bumping into him and making him scratch his brand new car. Casey always makes sure to keep a small but thick wad of paper between the pane and the frame to prevent it from fully closing.

 

Hextall doesn't know just how _after_ Casey's hours are, but as long as Casey doesn't fuck up the equipment, Casey figures Hextall figures he doesn't need to know. If Casey does get caught at some point, maybe a little run-in with a mall cop -- none of which Herrington's ever had, as far as he can tell -- or a real cop might increase his street cred just enough to save his balls a fieldtrip to the flagpole. Doubtful, but it wouldn't be the strangest thing to happen in this school.

 

Casey goes over to the class boombox that no one lets him touch during actual school hours and tunes the radio to a loud alternative station -- the kind with obnoxious DJsnand a lot of wall-of-sound guitars crashing in a fuzzed-out tidal wave. The constant rotation of lead singers suffering from world-weary detachment always makes Casey feel braver than he is. the effect is like having a friend right there in the room with him. The DJs make each other laugh and it's the next best thing to talking directly to Casey the whole night through.

 

Casey doesn't even fumble in the pitch-black closet when he's removing his film from his camera and placing it on the spool, anymore. Not even when he can't help imagining how easy it would be for someone to block him in therefrom the outside. He imagines someone coming in to murder him while he's blinded by the abrupt switch from darkness to light. Imagines how convenient it is that sound is so muffled in the tiny room. He wouldn't hear anyone (or any _thing_ ) coming.

 

Even as all this plays out in his mind in morbid, hypersensory detail, his hands are as sure and tremor-free on the cold steel coil as if he were born blind. Right before he yanks open the door to catch any motherfuckers off-guard.

 

At least he has the element of surprise on his side. Whenever he pulls an all-nighter to meet one of Delilah's increasingly insane demands (She knows how far she can push him to take advantage -- which is infinitely, probably, if Casey's being honest with himself. Sometimes it's obvious she's just curious to see how much he'll take. Casey wonders, himself.). Or whenever he's just trying to meet his own obsessive standards with the most microscopic of details that probably no one would notice, except maybe Delilah, which is funny (she'll never admit it, but she demands perfection, and Casey's work is the closest she's likely to get around here). And Zeke, probably. Fucker doesn't miss anything. Casey can and will spend hours longer than he originally planned for just that one second more of exposure for that deeper black, that one miniscule turn of the enlarger knob to have the edges that much sharper.

Casey loves preparing the three separate trays for the developer, stop bath, and fixer. The Holy Trinity, he likes to think of it. Or UNholy trinity, depending on the subject matter. Tonight's definitely belongs to the latter category. Three is such a satisfying number; Casey can practically feel Herrington's rumored ley lines going snap-crackle-POP! in his fingers and toes in anticipation of the work ahead. 

 

Casey loves the way the image slowly reverse-fades into existence, bit by bit in the developer tray, leaving him in suspense to see if he fucked up the shot and wasted all those hours of painstaking patience and planning and RISK ASSESSMENT setting it up. Or if he simply missed an opportunity because he wasn't quick enough on the draw to shoot while it was happening.

 

He has a near-Pavlovian response to vanilla-scented fixer. The vanilla is supposed to cover up the harsh chemical smell, but it justs adds more chemicals to the cocktail. Casey looks down at his latest experiment in black and white on the new satin-finish paper in the fixer tray. Keeping himself in steady supply has burned through his allowance and most of this year's birthday money.

 

Worth every penny, Casey thinks, allowing himself a small smile. It's safe now, since no one's around to smack him upside the head and demand, "The fuck're YOU smiling at, faggot!"

 

Casey gently tilts the fixer tray to make sure every corner of the print is soaked. A fresh cloud of chemical vanilla assaults his sinuses. He doesn't mind. Maybe even prefers it this way. He feels like an alchemist turning lead to gold.

 

Or Dr. Frankenstein, the way he uses science in a dark, isolated room to bring his insane creation to life. Casey snorts, then coughs at the sudden intake of fumes. Whatever. They're reading Mary Shelley in English lit; he's got monsters on the brain.

 

Casey draws in a deep breath and holds it. He wonders what the possible toxicity levels are doing to his lungs in such an enclosed space. He smirks at the thought that the dark room could have been so much bigger if football hadn't pillaged so much of Herrington's funding. He entertains a brief fantasy of suing the school over a debilitating medical condition and robbing all the Gabes of future generations a chance at meathead glory.

 

Casey exhales. Fat chance. The universe isn't suddenly going to develop a sense of poetic justice. Not based on his experience. Even so, he's not worried. It feels right that there's a price for this temporary escape from his flat, two-dimensional life. It makes it more real, somehow.

 

If only he could make the world in his photos REALLY come to life.

 

Every time Casey steps through the photography lab -- especially the dark room contained within it -- it's like he's entered a dream or an alternate reality. One of Casey's favorite debates with himself is whether it's better or worse to be the worst (or at least, lesser) version of himself. Should he despise his more successful, more popular, all-around less-miserable self? Or should he hope there's at least one version of Casey Fucking Connor that isn't the school freak? That isn't a total loser?

 

He can never decide. 

 

Zeke would probably have an answer worth hearing. Aside from Stan, Zeke's one of the few who never bothered kicking his ass just for existing. And he's annoyingly smart. Very smart.

 

But would it be worth sharing the same space with the asshole for however long it would take him to get all the asshole commentary out of his system and get to the point? It's not like having an actual conversation is something they do -- at least not intentionally (though they've exchanged plenty of fuck yous). They aren't friends. They aren't even bully and victim. They only run into each other outside of class when it's a complete fluke. But for two people who can't stand each other, they have a lot to say to one another. Though most of it's full of venom, every once in a while one of them will say something interesting.

 

So far, Casey's decided his curiosity hasn't reached that breaking point yet. But he can feel it snapping

 

It's thoughts like these that make Casey lose track of time with some of his experiments with new subjects. He suddenly snaps out of a trance to the sounds of the school waking up: the scraping and rattling of the janitor dragging the trash bin around, faculty voices starting their early morning bitching.

 

Casey needs to keep going just that little bit longer to finish up, but he's trashed from the second night in a row of no sleep. Casey switches to a German speed metal station he landed on randomly one day and ended up liking despite not soeaking a word of German other than SCHEISSE!, and not being a fan of any kind of metal, let alone speed metal.

 

The incomprehensible gutteral shrieking and lightning-fast guitar are weirdly soothing when his nerves are fried. Irritibility from sleep deprivation is smoothed out by the jarring contrast of the DJs' bizarre, surfer-dude personas in the song breaks.

 

Someone from the newspaper or one of the art classes is bound to come around soon and sneer at him like he's trying too hard with his music choices. Or it'll be a teacher pissed that her hangover cure (everyone except Casey really does have a life, apparently) is tested before the first pot of coffee's ready in the staff lounge.

 

For survival reasons, Casey's developed an immunity to the displeasure of others and their attempts to break in to his own private little atom-splitting forcefield that zaps everything it touches down to its base particles before it ever reaches him. Before the first bell rings, the lab is still his territory. He'll paste on a nervous smile that will be read as placating, but he can't be dragged away from his work before he's ready.

Even when he pushes the power button on the boombox, the echoes of ear-shredding white noise ring in his ears as he packs up his finished prints and box of photography paper in his backpack. He grabs his stack of reject prints before anyone can see them and shoves them loosely in a binder. He'll stow them in his locker first chance he gets. Hextall still has the original keys and he let in Bethany-of-the-avant-garde-fashion-collage in to breathe down his neck to stop hogging the work space. Delilah's fashion-sense is far superior, in Casey's opinion, but the what the fuck does he know.

 

The speed metal song's unhummable -- it doesn't matter which one, they're all unhummable -- but he catches himself trying to, anyway. As he slings his camera around his neck, the electric barbwire feel of it embeds itself in his brain, carrying him out the door and past shoving kids trying to make homeroom before the first bell.

 

Casey feels like he's suspended inside the glass sphere of an eye-of-the-storm. The music follows him like a loyal pet as he blocks out everything he hates about school and his parents and his home life. For the next few periods, it stays with him as he walks the halls and sits in the back of class and sidesteps legs thrown out to trip him. His nerves are numb and on fire at the same time. He's desensitized to everything he filters out. He dodges with hard-earned practice the loogies, and spitballs, and elbows to the face. 

 

Casey's ears are closed to the mock catcalls thrown his way, but thrumming to the reverb lightning zigzagging in his head. He doesn't even have to look at his prints; the finished images he's sweated over for hours, days, weeks, until he was finally satisfied enough to clip it all on a line flash in and out of his mind with crystalline clarity.

 

Out in the halls, Casey's a tiny stone skipping slong a stream. He's a water-strider, tiny feet touching the surface of the flood of students with the slightest pressure. Just enough to move forward. He barely feels the passing football players' kicks at his shins, the old bruises getting re-worked into fresh ones. The pulse of his blood throbbing beneath the surface is just a part of the internal soundtrack Casey dials all the way up.

 

Some distant part of him is sure that if someone bothered to take his picture right now, he'd have an insane look on his face: a deranged albino smiley-face focused on somewhere light years away. No doubt his creepy-Bambi eyes only add to the effect.

 

That's how Casey gets through the first half of the day.

\--

 

It's when Casey turns a corner during the middle of lunch to head to his locker, that his Airwalks squeak to a halt. 

 

Of course.

 

Instead of the usual Gabe-faithful jolting him out of his dark room trance, it's Zeke at the far end of the hall that snaps him out of himself.

 

Running into Zeke should be a buzzkill, but it's not. Which is as annoying as always. Casey's nerves just freeze up in shock, before buzzing louder. It's infuriating, unbearable. Some part of Casey is aware of the shriek of the fire alarm Zeke's hand is just falling away from, but it barely registers. The shock isn't that Zeke's casually pulling the alarm when there's no fire. That's a very Zeke thing to do. It's that Casey caught him in the act while running into him at the worst possible time. For both of them.

 

Casey's in a hallway that is empty except for the two of them. His Airwalks squeak to a halt, the non-skid grip of the rubber tread on the freshly waxed floor makes him overbalance and fumble his binder full of prints. They scatter around his feet. The whole time, Zeke's at the other end, looking like a startled lanky predator caught in the middle of a stealth kill. Zeke stares at Casey in disbelief. Casey can't tell if it's more at Casey's spastic flailing or his stunningly inconvenient timing.

 

If Casey had a third eye, it'd be a camera lens. Its aperture would be opening as it takes in the eerie scene before it. He'd use Kodachrome for his film this time. The colors would be brilliant but soft and dreamlike.

 

There's just enough light coming through the windows to paint everything both hyper-real and surreal at the same time. Having been stuck in darkness and artificial light all night, Casey's just noticing it's quality. It's one of those rare, strange days -- a particular kind of overcast that filters everything through a tepid, grayed-out blue light. The kind of day where the shadows seem stretched too thin and pale, overwashed like a favorite pair of jeans. 

 

Casey already knows how much exposure he'd use. Casey and Zeke would have sharp definition while everything else would be just a little too fuzzed out around the edges. An undefinable pocket universe so slippery it could fall right through your fingers. The only two people occupying it so sharp-edged and hyoer-focused that the image of them cuts the eyes.

 

A wind picks up and cuts through a window someone left cracked open. One of the prints slides exactly halfway between Casey and Zeke. Idiot that Casey is, he forgot to pack away some of the worst offenders while he was too busy riding his dark room high and feeling so pleased with himself. He's just so used to no one taking any interest in what he's doing.

 

Except at the worst possible times.

 

Like right now.

 

Casey darts forward to grab the print but Zeke's long legs easily beat him to it before he can snatch it away back to safety. Zeke picks it up, dark eyebrows hiking up his forehead as he thoroughly examines it with a mystified yet scientific air.

 

Casey's gone into a kind of suspended animation for a second too long, like those sub-arctic frogs in Canada that literally freeze in Winter before thawing out in the Spring. His eyes are locked on Zeke as he strides forward to the next part that's behind them. Zeke snatches it right out of Casey's hands.

 

Zeke's satisfied smirk falls right off his face, eyes leaping up to Casey's at the first glance at the damning print.

 

Most people don't realize Casey's an excellent runner, especially while under pressure.

 

It's the masochist in Casey -- not the scared little geek -- that nails his feet to the floor as Zeke gathers all the photos in one stack and pauses and flips past the completely unstaged sepia-toned shot of miniature shark fins circling in the rippling surface of Furlong's desk; the white steam rising off of Miss Burke while she sits alone; and finally, Zeke takes a visual tour of himself printed over and over from every possible GTO-lounging, eye-raising, smirking angle.

END

\---


End file.
